Without suggesting that colleges and universities manage their budgets well, and knowing full well that Research universities (NSF I and II) have foisted really problematic construction and other costs - like the perpetual fiscal losers that are large research grants and Intellectual Licensing and Technology Transfer offices - onto student tuition, it seems to me that tuition costs have gone up for three main reasons... 1) rising energy costs exacerbated by the fact that so many schools have older and/or really really poorly built buildings - from dorms to classroom units and beyond, 2) rising health care costs exacerbated by how stressful university work is and how unhealthy Americans are, and 3), for public higher education, round after round after round of net and gross budget cuts. (At elite small colleges costs explode, additionally, because of the intense competition for students and all the construction and programs necessary to draw them in.)
But the defaults are also treated as if they exist in a vacuum. Sure more and more ex-students are defaulting... why?! Could it have as much to do with stagnant wages and declining income mobility for most of the American working class so that the transfer of wealth from the bottom and middle to the top can continue apace? Could it have something to do with debt loads other than student loans? Could it have something to do with the staggeringly irresponsible student loan industry's practices - relative to offering loans, hiding opportunities for grants over loans and veiling the capriciously ballooning interest rates the industry could shift ex-student to on a whim over the last thirty years?
Tuition is going up and defaults are kinda bad but let's be careful we don't jump on a really vile bandwagon here.
On Thu, Sep 9, 2010 at 11:25 AM, <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> Interesting: chart showing education bubble compared to housing bubble.
>
> http://blog.american.com/?source=patrick.net&p=19189#logo-n-tagline
>
> Joanna
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319